Three
by Subtlynice
Summary: With three days to go until his hanging, Callum McGregor looks back on a life filled with love, regret, but most of all, hope.


Three

**BEWARE: OVERLY LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE, IN EXPLANATION TO MY ALERT LIST, WHO ARE PROBABLY WONDERING WHAT THE HELL THIS IS.**

A/N: This is completely new territory I'm entering. I know the people on my alerts list will be wondering who/what this is about, but I read Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses series _years_ ago, and fell in love with the books. Now that she's released a fourth, I've fallen in love with that one too. So, in honour of Malorie Blackman's incredible talent (and to hopefully advertise a beautiful, compelling love story) I've decided to write a Noughts and Crosses fanfic. I don't expect to get many reviews, but I'd really appreciate them.

Callum's point of view was actually very easy to write. He's a lot like Edward (Cullen) in that conflicted, haunted past, hopelessly-in-love type way.

Those of you who've already read the series can skip the rest of this note. A little bit of background for those of you on my alert list who have no idea what I'm talking about:

Noughts and Crosses is set in an alternate universe- one very similar but also radically different to our own. A world set in a society still heavily overshadowed by racism, where the classes are divided based on skin colour. In an ingenious twist, white people, known as 'noughts' (notice the lack of a capital letter), are the inferior class. They attend different schools to Crosses, earn less money, get worse jobs and are generally racially inferior. Black people are known as 'Crosses', and they hold the power in society. They run the government, have the best education, the best careers and the most money. Callum McGregor is a nought. Persephone (Sephy) Hadley is a Cross, and the daughter of one of the wealthiest, most important men in the country. Noughts and Crosses simply don't mix, but Sephy and Callum are best friends and determined to find a way to try to be together.

Warning: this fic is set at the end of the first book, and contains some pretty heavy spoilers. You have been warned! Okay, okay, enough advertising Malorie Blackman's story already. On with the fanfic!

* * *

Three.

Three years ago, I watched my best friend, the love of my life, Sephy Hadley chauffeured away and out of my life for good.

Three years ago I lost her. Three months ago I found her again.

Three weeks ago, I was sentenced to death.

In three days time, I die.

I wonder what it would be like, to live? To be with Sephy the way I always longed to be. Officially. Publicly. Equally.

Sephy will look beautiful in pregnancy. I've always heard people say that pregnant woman are- what was it?- glowing. I never really understood that phrase until I saw her in the rose garden. So afraid, so troubled, but so radiant. So _alive_.

Our child will be damn lucky to have such a gorgeous mum.

Beautiful. Her smooth dark skin, her gorgeous brown eyes, her warm smile, her trusting, accepting heart…

Beautiful. No doubt our child will be beautiful too.

Will our child be a girl or a boy? My eyes or hers? Accepted as a nought or a Cross? Ryan or Callie Rose?

Doesn't matter much. I'd love the kid all the same, no matter what. Only, unlike other fathers, I won't have the chance.

A father. I'll be a _dad_. It's funny, really. That sort of stuff is supposed to freak guys out, because they worry that they'll be on nappy duty 24/7, or that their child'll grow up hating their guts out. I don't have to worry about all of that stuff. Instead, I'm worrying about what'll happen when the kid finds out that daddy was hung as a terrorist, and supposedly kidnapped and raped mummy.

Sephy'll deal with all of that when she has to though. Sephy'll be a great mum.

A mum. Sephy will be a _mother_.

God, that makes me feel old. But not old enough to die. No, not that.

Not yet.

But I will.

I've been sentenced to death, and why? I'm the unlucky bastard who got caught in the crossfire of a damaged society's bullets. I'm the man who fell in love with the wrong woman. I'm the nought who dared to love a Cross. Such a despicable crime can only be righted by my death. The men I've killed have died forgotten. It's not their deaths that have brought me this punishment. It is the death of equality, the death of society that I am to be hung for.

It's so damn unfair that I want to stamp my feet and cry. I feel like a child again- watching Sephy racing around with a brand new bicycle, and wondering why we noughts never got such posh toys for our birthdays. When I asked mum about it, she told me to stop being so ungrateful and be thankful that I had Sephy for a friend. Sephy always let me share her toys. Sometimes, as a kid, I felt like her equal.

What a shame I had to grow up.

What a shame Sephy had to grow up. She was always so oblivious as a child. I remember those first few months we spent together at Heathcroft School. Before then, even when we were meeting in secret, on our- _her_ –private beach, it never occurred to her just how far the hatred runs.

She realises now. It took something extraordinary to make her see the truth, and now that she fully understands, I almost wish she didn't. I'll never forget how it felt… how it _hurt_, to watch her sobbing and scrambling around for her clothes on the floor, just moments after we had made love. How terrified I was that I'd hurt her, that I'd taken her unwillingly…

Well, I did hurt her in the end, didn't I? Not physically, but mentally. She's in love with a man who's due to be put to death in three days. She's pregnant with a mixed-race child, she's been thrown out of her home because she refused to have an abortion… and she came to the same painful epiphany that I had to accept years ago. That wherever we go, whatever we do, we'll never be accepted. Not together. There'll always be someone like Kamal Hadley to drive us apart.

I can't help but dwell on the past. My most precious moments with Sephy are being relived before my eyes, without my permission. In the Liberation Militia, I had forced myself to think of Sephy as just another Cross, and think of Crosses as a whole as the daggers behind the deaths of so many noughts; the people who deserved the worst punishment possible for dragging us down. But now… now, with no future to look forward to, the past is all I have left, and I can see how wrong I was. How wrong the LM were. How had my Sephy ever been at fault for the way her peers treated me? How many times had she stood up for me, protected me? How many chances had we had to be together, before we ran out of time?

In the end, we spent our whole lives together, and still, there was never enough time.

I remember the most perfect night of my life. The night I finally broke free from the LM's rules, the night my feelings for Sephy finally broke free of all the barriers I had tried to hide them behind. I remember her joy and bewilderment as I kissed her, and stroked her abdomen slowly until all the pain was gone. I remember her frightened, longing expression as I joined my body with hers and made love to her for the first and only time. How amazing it had felt, how powerful it was, how no feeling in the world could compare… I'd had my fair share of lovers, but Sephy was the only one I'd ever loved. The strength of the feeling it gave me as I watched her eyes shining with astonishment and elation… Sephy's face had always kept me grounded, but the look on her face as we made love was the best memory of my life I could dredge up while sitting in this cell. And her soft replies as I told her I loved her, over and over again, were the best sounds I could ever have dared to remember. My love for Sephy had been bottled away inside for so long that it had felt good to get it out in the open, and once I had said it, I felt like I could never stop. I didn't _want_ to stop. If I could, I'd never stop saying it. I'd die telling Sephy that I loved her.

I need to see her again. To speak to her just one last time.

_Speak to her_… suddenly, with a flash of inspiration, I know what I must do.

I call to Jack, a Cross prison guard I've become friendly with over the last few weeks. Sephy and I. Jack and I. Proof that someday in the future, noughts and Crosses could live compatibly, side-by-side after all.

"Can you do me a favour?" I ask him. "Can you get me a pen and some paper? And an envelope, too?"

"Sure," he replies, with only a slight frown etched into his face. I thank him when he returns with my supplies, but I wait until he is out of sight before I raise the pen. No need to have a breakdown in front of an audience.

_Sephy_, I write, with trembling fingers.

And then the words burst out of me, and I'm frantically scribbling down everything I've wanted to tell her since our last meeting. Everything I didn't get to say, everything I wanted to do, and wanted to show her… how I long for us to be together…

Together.

The three of us. Sephy and I and our child.

Us against the world.

But that will never, ever happen. A single, solitary tear slides down my nose, dripping once onto the paper in front of me. The ink blots my words, and an old phrase of my mum's comes back to me.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

How will I see this through? How can I die without ever seeing our child? Without seeing Sephy's face one last time?

_Sephy, Sephy, Sephy. Oh, God, I love you, Sephy. Sorry for being such an idiot. Sorry for ruining your life. Sorry for estranging you from your family. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…_

I imagine what our future could have been like, if only I'd opened that damn letter she wrote to me in time to get to her before she left for Chivers Boarding School. We'd have gotten out of here and made a fresh start. Gone somewhere new- somewhere on the very edge of the planet, with no people, no one to judge us or question Sephy's sanity for choosing someone as lower-class as me.

In a perfect reality, we'd live on the moon. Just Sephy and I. And our child…

I look down at my own letter, and almost write, _God, I hope our kid doesn't have my nose_, just to picture her laughing- her beautiful brown nose scrunched up in amusement and her eyes shining with mirth.

But instead, I stop, sign my name, and look back at the words I have written.

It's the most honest manuscript of my life. The most intimate, revealing words I could possibly have chosen. It's my feelings for Sephy. Sephy who, in three days time, will be left a single mother with no family, no friends, no one to care for her or support her as she goes through the process of mourning for her best friend; her only lover…

_No._

It's the most honest manuscript of my life, and it's also the deadliest weapon my brother Jude or Kamal Hadley, or anyone else could possibly use against her. If it were the other way around, if Sephy were the one dying for our child's freedom, would I be able to live and move on, knowing that I had chosen the life of our child over the life of someone who felt such enduring, unbridled love towards me?

Would this letter just make it worse for Sephy to survive?

I hear that phrase in my head again: _the pen is mightier than the sword_.

I scrunch the letter up in my fist. _No_. Sephy has to live. Sephy has to move on. Whether or not I die by the noose in three days time, Sephy should not live haunted by my memory. She deserved the perfect, Cross future she'd always been headed towards; a successful lawyer with a big house and a steady income to support herself and her children.

She deserved a husband, and come three days time, I would not be available to give myself to her in that role, as much as I longed to. Could I begrudge her for moving on? For finding another man she loved as I had always loved her?

No. I could never bare a grudge against Sephy, not even when we were kids. Even in our teenage years, during our separation, when I had drilled Sephy's race into my mind and sworn to myself that I hated her as much as the rest of her kind, I had known it was all lies. Just as my class didn't matter to her, Sephy could never, in my eyes, be defined by her race. Sephy was good and kind, and she deserved the chance to move on. She deserved a clean break from me and a future swept clear of my memory. And as much as I long to confess all to her, I know that it is selfish and cruel to Sephy to put her through the pain of reading words of love from the man she can never have. It would be kinder for her to hear only of hatred.

I raise the tip of my pen one more time. Everything I want to say to her, I write the opposite.

"I don't love you. I never did."

_I love you so much it hurts._

"And as for the sex, well you were available and there was nothing else to do."

_The night I made love to you was the greatest, most perfect night of my life. I only wish I could feel like that just one last time…_

"Forget me. I've already forgotten about you."

_Remember me, Sephy. Remember me and smile. God, how I love that smile._

* * *

I'm so afraid. Terrified. I don't want to die.

It's the day of my execution. Funny, really, how one word can encompass so much. It's my execution from life, from love… it's the end of my life, but for some strange reason, it just feels like any other day. Apart from, of course, the quickening rhythm of my heart. I feel like it's trying to pump as many times as possible before it stops. I'm trying to love Sephy as much as possible before I'm dust.

Jack is here. I wonder how such a kind man copes with his job. He sends people to their deaths, but his black face is lined with the toll it has taken on him. Of course, most of the people he has guarded have been guilty of something more than love. And so am I- I'm a murderer, the same as any other man to have been hung. What a pity the courts never found out about that particular crime. Then maybe the government wouldn't be having such a hard time answering the doubting press, who seem to think my punishment is a little harsh.

A _little_. They're conversing over whether or not I should die on the same page as the weather forecast. The weather forecast for tomorrow. A day I'll never get to see.

Jack treats me to a game of cards- one last game. He doesn't say this, but I know it's what he thinks. Still, this game will forever be left unfinished.

"D'you ever wonder what it would be like if our positions were reversed?" I ask him. It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently. "If we whites were in charge instead of you Crosses?"

Jack shrugs. I can tell that this sort of conversation makes him uncomfortable. Especially with me. I'm white. He's black. And more than that, I'm the guy who's about to be hung for getting Kamal Hadley's daughter knocked up with a mixed-race child.

Oh god. Hung. About to be _hung_. Just minutes left. Minutes. Seconds.

"People are people," Jack says after a while. "We'll always find a way to mess up, doesn't matter who's in charge."

I think about this for a while. It seems more realistic than the idealised world of equality I'd always visualised. With possibly only minutes to go before the guards send for me, I ask Jack to do me one last favour. I hand him the letter- my _second_ letter –and ask him to pass it on to Sephy.

"Persephone Hadley?" He asks, unsure. I see him glance quickly to one side; to the rubbish bin beside my bed, where the crumpled original letter lies.

"Yes," I tell him, wishing my heart wasn't breaking in the process, and thankfully, as a last acknowledgement to our friendship, no doubt, he agrees and tucks Sephy's letter into his jacket pocket.

_Sorry, Sephy. It's all lies, but it's the only way. Live. Move on. Forgive me._

Minutes later, as I knew they would, the guards come for me.

I walk. I hear the crowds, I see the faces. But through the swarms of people, all waiting to see the hanging of the century, I can't find the one face I'm looking for.

_Where are you, Sephy?_

I reach the stage. The hood is pulled across my face, and I can't see anything anymore. Tears trickle down my face. Seconds to go.

"I LOVE YOU, CALLUM!"

_Sephy. Oh, God, Sephy. She's here._

"I LOVE YOU, CALLUM. AND OUR CHILD WILL LOVE YOU TOO. I LOVE YOU CALLUM, I'LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU…

_Don't watch Sephy. Don't watch me die. Please. I don't want you to have to watch me die._

The noose is yanked around my neck.

"I LOVE YOU, CALLUM…"

And I am no longer afraid. Sephy is here. Sephy will live. Our child will live.

"I… I LOVE YOU TOO, SEPHY… I LOVE YOU, SEPHY. I LOVE YOU, SEPHY…"

I love you Sephy. Always. No matter what I may have written.

"I LOVE YOU, CALLUM…"

Sephy. Sephy, I love you. I love you. God, I love you.

"SEPHY, I LO-"

* * *

The hangman's trap has been opened. A solitary figure blows in the wind, and as the crowds look on in disdain and a gruesome fascination, one woman slowly sinks to her knees.

* * *

A/N: Is it wrong that so many of my favourite fictional characters are murderers? Edward Cullen, Callum McGregor… they really are uncannily similar. Especially in New Moon/ Knife Edge, with Callum's letter and Edward's departure… the only difference is, Edward came back. Callum was too busy being dead to take back what he wrote.

On a happier note, it's my birthday today! Or, it was my birthday on the day this story was posted, anyway. I'd love some reviews as a special birthday treat.

And to my fic list: the next chapter of 'Thy Beauty' is still a work in progress, but it's getting there. I've had a pretty rough time lately, but I've used it as inspiration, as I always do when I'm feeling down, and now I'm back on track.


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